.TH compactsnoop 8  "2019-11-1" "USER COMMANDS"
.SH NAME
compactsnoop \- Trace compact zone events. Uses Linux eBPF/bcc.
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B compactsnoop [\-h] [\-T] [\-p PID] [\-d DURATION] [\-K] [\-e]
.SH DESCRIPTION
compactsnoop traces the compact zone events, showing which processes are
allocing pages with memory compaction. This can be useful for discovering
when compact_stall (/proc/vmstat) continues to increase, whether it is
caused by some critical processes or not.

This works by tracing the compact zone events using raw_tracepoints and one
kretprobe.

For the Centos 7.6 (3.10.x kernel), see the version under tools/old, which
uses an older memory compaction mechanism.

Since this uses BPF, only the root user can use this tool.
.SH REQUIREMENTS
CONFIG_BPF and bcc.
.SH OPTIONS
.TP
\-h
Print usage message.
.TP
\-T
Include a timestamp column.
.TP
\-p PID
Trace this process ID only (filtered in-kernel).
.TP
\-d DURATION
Total duration of trace in seconds.
.TP
\-K
Output kernel stack trace
.TP
\-e
Show extended fields.
.SH EXAMPLES
.TP
Trace all compact zone events:
#
.B compactsnoop
.TP
Trace all compact zone events, for 10 seconds only:
#
.B compactsnoop -d 10
.SH FIELDS
.TP
TIME(s)
Time of the call, in seconds.
.TP
COMM
Process name
.TP
PID
Process ID
.TP
NODE
Memory node
.TP
ZONE
Zone of the node (such as DMA, DMA32, NORMAL eg)
.TP
ORDER
Shows which order alloc cause memory compaction, -1 means all orders (eg: write
to /proc/sys/vm/compact_memory)
.TP
MODE
SYNC OR ASYNC
.TP
FRAGIDX (extra column)
The FRAGIDX is short for fragmentation index, which only makes sense if an
allocation of a requested size would fail. If that is true, the fragmentation
index indicates whether external fragmentation or a lack of memory was the
problem. The value can be used to determine if page reclaim or compaction
should be used.
.PP
.in +8n
Index is between 0 and 1 so return within 3 decimal places
.PP
.in +8n
0 => allocation would fail due to lack of memory
.PP
.in +8n
1 => allocation would fail due to fragmentation
.TP
MIN (extra column)
The min watermark of the zone
.TP
LOW (extra column)
The low watermark of the zone
.TP
HIGH (extra column)
The high watermark of the zone
.TP
FREE (extra column)
The nr_free_pages of the zone
.TP
LAT(ms)
compact zone's latency
.TP
STATUS
The compaction's result.
.PP
.in +8n
For (CentOS 7.6's kernel), the status include:
.PP
.in +8n
"skipped" (COMPACT_SKIPPED): compaction didn't start as it was not possible or
direct reclaim was more suitable
.PP
.in +8n
"continue" (COMPACT_CONTINUE): compaction should continue to another pageblock
.PP
.in +8n
"partial" (COMPACT_PARTIAL): direct compaction partially compacted a zone and
there are suitable pages
.PP
.in +8n
"complete" (COMPACT_COMPLETE): The full zone was compacted
.PP
.in +8n
For (kernel 4.7 and above):
.PP
.in +8n
"not_suitable_zone" (COMPACT_NOT_SUITABLE_ZONE): For more detailed tracepoint
output - internal to compaction
.PP
.in +8n
"skipped" (COMPACT_SKIPPED): compaction didn't start as it was not possible or
direct reclaim was more suitable
.PP
.in +8n
"deferred" (COMPACT_DEFERRED): compaction didn't start as it was deferred due
to past failures
.PP
.in +8n
"no_suitable_page" (COMPACT_NOT_SUITABLE_PAGE): For more detailed tracepoint
output - internal to compaction
.PP
.in +8n
"continue" (COMPACT_CONTINUE): compaction should continue to another pageblock
.PP
.in +8n
"complete" (COMPACT_COMPLETE): The full zone was compacted scanned but wasn't
successful to compact suitable pages.
.PP
.in +8n
"partial_skipped" (COMPACT_PARTIAL_SKIPPED): direct compaction has scanned part
of the zone but wasn't successful to compact suitable pages.
.PP
.in +8n
"contended" (COMPACT_CONTENDED): compaction terminated prematurely due to lock
contentions
.PP
.in +8n
"success" (COMPACT_SUCCESS): direct compaction terminated after concluding that
the allocation should now succeed
.PP
.in +8n
.SH OVERHEAD
This traces the kernel compact zone kprobe/kretprobe or raw_tracepoints and
prints output for each event. As the rate of this is generally expected to be
low (< 1000/s), the overhead is also expected to be negligible.
.SH SOURCE
This is from bcc.
.IP
https://github.com/iovisor/bcc
.PP
Also look in the bcc distribution for a companion _examples.txt file containing
example usage, output, and commentary for this tool.
.SH OS
Linux
.SH STABILITY
Unstable - in development.
.SH AUTHOR
Wenbo Zhang
